This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Viktor Frankl.

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
--Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning.

If you haven't read Man's Search for Meaning, run out and buy it now.

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Comments

[nichole]

or check it out of the local public library! find it here: http://worldcat.org/oclc/10800683 :)

[Jack Sparrow]

Unfortunately, Frankl is also dead wrong.

If you really want to understand something about human condition, you will have to go through Hobbes and evolution. A true part of life is that love is nothing but a illusion of life. What matters is our need for sex to spread our genes. In that process we select mates which are compatible with us in various categories like looks and intellect.

Som are just born lucky and other fight for it for life to make it at some place. That is the reason if you observe carefully people with similar looks usually end up together.

Read Steven Pinker's - How the mind works and the blank slate.

Frankl is pretty interesting, but I would argue that human life is filled with misery for the majority and for the small minority it gives an illusion to think about love so that we don't go crazy hearing the truth.

Truth is harsh, and life is nasty, short and brutish for most of humanity. And it kills me, but I fear that this will always remain so.

And this reminds me of the prologue of Bertrand Russell's brilliant autobiography.
Here it is.

"What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. "

The difference between me and Russell would be I am not that sure how much my life is worth.

It could be similar to what VS Naipaul's opening line in 'The Bend in the River'

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

Unfortunately, for the major part of humanity it will always be so.

But for those really interested in learning about happiness might want to look into
Dan Gilbert's - Stumbling About Happiness, which gives a decent introduction about the complexity of a emotion like happiness.

[travelinoma]

What did Viktor Frankl bring from his earlier life that helped him through this dark time? Why do some of us see happiness as a right, and others see it as a figment of someone else's imagination? Should I feel guilty that I experience happiness on a daily basis, or am I naive to think I understand something so complex?

[Jack Sparrow]

"Should I feel guilty that I experience happiness on a daily basis, or am I naive to think I understand something so complex?"

1)Guilty is a wrong word to use in this instance.

2)Understanding is not the same thing as experiencing.

If you do experience it "everyday" do everything in your power to preserve it, because you are statistical anomaly, I think, because it is factually impossible for everyone to achieve on this planet. Simply because it is in contradiction with both economics and evolution.

Scarcity is the first major concept of social life and in any world where there is scarcity there are going to be conflicts. And life will be very boring without scarcity. Comparative advantage helps us here to not kill each other brutally, but that doesn't hold in every instance. Human history is good example of that. And as Mark Twain said, "History of mankind is not that of a rational being, it is a history of a perfect maniac."

It is also arguable that happiness is a relative concept. Studies have shown that if we possess something which other people don't it makes us more happy than if everyone possesses them. For example, if my income was $60,000 and everyone else earned $40,000 if would be more happy in that society, whereas if I earned $500,000 and everyone else earned say $700,000 I would not be as happy in this society, strictly based on earnings.

Also if you experience something does not mean you know what goes behind it. If you jump from a high place, you don't have to know about Newton's laws of gravitation to experience gravitation itself. The same goes for happiness.

[Jack Sparrow]

Correction, I meant:

Dan Gilbert's - Stumbling on Happiness

[Gretchen Rubin]

Gosh, I really don't know where to start to respond to Jack Sparrow's thoughtful comments. I come at these issues from such a different angle. I will make a few very brief points:
-- I do not believe that love is an illusion.
--If you liked Russell's autobiography, be sure to read his CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS.
--There is no reason to feel guilty for feeling happy. Your unhappiness won't help others; your happiness does help others; and studies show that happy people are more inclined to altruism, more likely to intervene to help others effectively.

So much more, no room here! I really appreciate these thoughtful responses.

[Jack Sparrow]

I didn't imply that the so-called happy people should feel "guilty," for feeling happy while others don't feel the same way.

For the most part, I would venture to guess, nobody can literally be happy 24-7 for their whole life and similarly nobody (not even in the third-world)can be miserable 24-7.

Love is a little bit tricky. It depends how you want to think about it. If you want to go deep it gets a little dark, but there is no point going too deep. Intellectuallism doesn't buy happiness, on the contrary, it buys a good ticket to be unhappy.

I like Russell, but don't buy everything he says indiscriminately. But thanks for the tip, I will look into the book.

But I agree that I ended up taking Hobbes a little too literally:

"Truth is harsh, and life is nasty, short and brutish for most of humanity. And it kills me, but I fear that this will always remain so."

This is too predictive a statement, not necessarily backed by evidence, so I guess a little bit too much speculation out of the hat is not justified. My apologies for that.

It reminds me of this,

"I'm in no condition to drive...wait! I shouldn't listen to myself, I'm drunk!" -Homer J. Simpson

Also, there is no point pointing out just the hyper-sad things in life there are fun moments too (maybe not for all but they nevertheless are).

And to counteract the negative Naipaul quote, I will use another beardie, Bernard Shaw:

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw

cheers!

[Adam Khan]

That is a GREAT quote. I remember reading that a long time ago, and being very moved by it, and I've thought about that very quote many times since. It was so great to read it again. Thank you.